


Gender is Weird

by debtdoctor



Series: Fade Breakout AU [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Blue-Purple Hawke, Coming Out, Gen, Purple Hawke, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7856149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debtdoctor/pseuds/debtdoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles about Hawke growing up as they figure out their gender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Why are Mother and Bethany the only ones who get to wear dresses?”

Carver scoffs. “They’re girls, _duh_.”

Garrett chews this over for a minute. “So why are girls the only ones who get to wear dresses?”

Carver, being six, does not have an answer. He deflects. “Why are you asking? Do _you_  want to wear a dress?”

“Sometimes. It seems like it might be fun.” Garrett’s legs kick back and forth, as eight year old children aren’t quite tall enough to reach the floor with their toes while remaining seated.

Carver allows that, because he’s never worn a dress, he doesn’t actually know if it would be fun or not.

The two raid Bethany’s closet. Carver decides dresses are fun because his sister yells at him for wearing hers, and Garrett decides that dresses are fun because they’re pretty.

Bethany throws fits as it goes on, and Leandra, fed up with the tantrums, buys her other two children one sundress each. Carver’s interest rapidly fades as Bethany doesn’t care when he wears _his_ dress, but Garrett’s is worn occasionally. When it _f_ _eels_  right.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for casual cissexism.

Carver is twelve and Garrett is fourteen when Malcolm sits them down for The Talk About Puberty.  
It’s gross and everyone laughs because Dad makes weird voices and draws a Fear Demon with body hair in the appropriate places, including all eight of its legs, and Carver is too embarrassed to ask if he’s going to grow six additional legs.  
  
That night, after they’ve both been sent to bed, Garrett whispers into the darkness of their shared room.

“Carver, you awake?”

“I am _now_.”

“You ever think that you don’t want to be a boy?”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I think I do.”

“What, you want to be a girl instead?” Carver shudders at the image of _two_ mage sisters instead of one. It’s an awful, horrible thought. He sends a prayer to the Maker that he will never have to live that life.

Garrett laughs. “ _Maker,_  no. I’d have to grow boobs or something. That would be _weird_.”

Carver, hidden by the dark room, mouths a “thanks” at the Maker for sparing him a torturous life.

They both laugh at the idea of boobs. At the idea of Garrett having boobs. And at the word boobs, because honestly, it’s a funny word.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for use of the q-slur in its reclaimed form.

Leandra and Malcolm are equal parts relieved and confused when a sixteen year old Garrett sits them down and declares that being called “he” feels weird.

“ _You’re_ weird," Bethany says. Carver agrees.

Garrett shrugs. “We’re a family with three home schooled kids, three of us are mages, we live on a farm, and our dog eats at the table. I’m okay with weird.”

Malcolm admits that Garrett has a point.

Leandra worries that enforcing the idea that it didn’t matter whether clothes were labelled boy clothes or girl clothes in the store has had some sort of lasting impact. They hadn’t exactly had the money to be choosey about it at the time.

Malcolm rolls his eyes at his wife.

“Does being called she feel weird?” He asks, because if Garrett is transgender, well… Malcolm saw all kinds at the Circle. Microcosm communities. Everyone in the Ostwick Circle had been queer in one way or another, and everyone knew it. He guessed he understood why people would want to live with people who were more like themselves. It was part of why he left the Circle altogether.

“Even weirder,” Garrett says, with no small amount of authority.

“You let us know what doesn’t feel weird, okay kiddo?” He says, ruffling Garrett’s hair. Leandra shoots Malcolm a Look, and yes, they probably should talk about this in the other room at some point. She was, at least, raised right about sexuality, so gender shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for her.

Garrett promises to think about it, says something about being a worst example of an older brother and the weirdest example of an older sister with a laugh, and the self-deprecating aside, it’s clear the kid was scared about saying something.

Bethany asks if this means she can practice doing make-up on other people with Garrett, because Carver always says no. Garrett agrees, but only if they do _each others’_  makeup.

The two sport some… Interesting looks over the next few weeks.

It takes Garrett a while, and a lot of reading, to figure out that they pronouns work the best for them, but it works.


	4. Chapter 4

Garrett doesn’t start introducing themself as Hawke until after their dad dies. It was always _him_  that was Hawke. Before. It rubs Carver the wrong way, because all he can see is Garrett trying to replace their father, but Bethy gets it. Dad left, and Garrett wasn’t ready to let him go. Not really. So they grabbed onto what they could of him.

She also suspects it’s a gender thing, something to do with the fact that Garrett is a _boy’s_  name. How she’d spent a few nights thinking up new names with them. Garrett could have been Marian, if they’d been a girl.

 

“Garian. Marett. Mariette?” Garrett shakes their head. “They sound weird. I don’t think I _like_  them, you know?” They rub the back of their neck, lips pursed.

“So don’t change your name,” Bethany offers.

Garrett huffs, but doesn’t say anything.

She tries calling them Hawke _once_. They laugh at the way it falls, stilted, off her tongue, and she laughs at the way they snort, and she pretends she doesn’t see the way their eyebrows furrow whenever she calls them Garrett. Whenever Carver calls her Sister, and she calls him Brother. Garrett is Garrett.

 

 

She would have thought, sitting at _their table_  in the Hanged Man, the whole group of them, that perhaps her oldest sibling had found a place where they could be Hawke, instead. Beth would have smiled a little as she sipped her weak ale.

Hawke looks away from the empty spot next to their brother, and offers their mug in cheers. Carver quirks an eyebrow at them, but obliges, as if he'd had an inkling of what they'd been thinking anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may have been a work of pure indulgence, born of desires for my own family to be as accommodating. I'm not AMAB, so if there's anything in here that is straight up wrong for a potential AMAB experience, please let me know. /fingerguns out/


End file.
